(IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 89

Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2009

An Efficient Adaptation Aware Caching

Architecture for Multimedia Content Proxies
B.L. Velammal1 and P. Anandha Kumar2
1
Lecturer, Department of CSE, Anna University,
Chennai – 25, India
velammalbl@cs.annauniv.edu
2
Assistant Professor, Department of IT, MIT Campus, Anna University,
Chennai – 44, India
anandh@annauniv.edu

Abstract: One of the challenges in the development of proxy-
based content adaptation architecture is the implementation of
proxy cache which aims at reducing the amount of transcoding
operations and server traffic. In the absence of adaptation-
aware caching at content proxies, the system performance
suffers due to repeated and frequent access of same image
versions on the remote content server. An efficient mechanism
for caching the most relevant images and their variations can
considerably reduce the above overheads. The efficiency of a
content proxy can be improved by caching of image versions
that are frequently accessed by client devices. Consequently, a
considerable amount of transcoding-related computational load
on content servers is reduced. This paper addresses these cache
management issues by proposing an adaptation aware
architecture for content adaptation proxies that focuses its cache
removal policy on transcoding cost. The proposed architecture
improves efficiency when compared to conventional cache
management schemes, by resulting in lesser traffic between the
proxy and remote server and lowering the number of
transcoding operations.
Keywords: Content adaptation architectures,
management, multimedia.
1. Introduction
Adaptation of multimedia content can be done at three
possible locations: at the client device, at the content server
or at a specialized multimedia proxy between the two. Client
side adaptation requires the adaptation operations to be
performed on the client devices receiving these objects.
Though this is not unknown, in current scenario involving
widespread use of handhelds, the computational power
required for these operations is hard to find. Even is present,
it takes up a larger time, decreasing efficiency than what
could be obtained by the other schemes. In client-side
architectures, cache precedence could increase efficiency
considerably, but this is a seldom used practice as memory is
again a scarce resource.
In case of server-side adaptation techniques, conventional
web servers are imbued with content adaptation processes.
Caching of the adapted content here involves storing
multiple variations of the same content in order to match
with client requirement specification. This reduces the
number of transcoding operations required, minimizing the
need for computational power but increasing pressure on
storage requirements. The trade off is between available
storage and computational power. Also, it is to be noted in
this case that the entire client load is on the server. This in
tandem with a large number of transformations could
possibly bring down response time below accepted standards
and at the worse, result in system failure.
Proxy-based approach introduces a new layer between the
client and the server, the content proxy, effectively forming
a three tier architecture. The content proxy receives the
requests from the client and responds to it from the data
obtained from the server. The need for a cache is implicit
here. The proxy can store the variations of objects to
respond to the client requests. It is easy to see that by
associating a server to more than one client (a one to many
mapping) the load on the server is reduced. Also there is
effective separation of computation and data storage sectors
by exporting computational requirements to the proxy. Also
the effective computational load is reduced as it is
cache
distributed, hence lowering individual system costs as well
as increasing system reliability while paving way for
graceful system degradation via load balancing. It can be
seen that the advantages of a content proxy are widespread
and myriad. This approach is indeed widely used and
recommended.
Proxies can exhibit passive caching as well as active
caching. In passive caching, if the object is not cache it is
retrieved from the server and older objects are removed in
the event of cache overflow. Active caching aims at
improving retrieval performance by increasing the
likelihood that a requested object will be found in the cache.
It can also work as a superset of passive caching based on
the load on the proxy. In content adaptation proxies, the
choice of using active caching should be based on an
analysis of frequently adapted object versions. The
architecture proposed in this paper aims at implementing
active caching and thereby reduce repeated adaptation
operations and traffic between content server and content
proxies.
2. Background and Related Work

Over the past decade, a number of proxy-based architectures

90 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2009

for content adaptation have been proposed. A proxy-based formulated for cache management. However, their node
framework for dynamic adaptation in distributed multimedia structure and tree construction algorithms do not take the
applications [1] describes the functions of a proxy that can cache replacement policy into account. An efficient cache
be configured to perform adaptations of multimedia. indexing structure on Content Proxies will have to take into
Another adaptation architecture called MARCH [2] enables account the transcoding costs between image variations as a
the creation of a service-based overlay network. It provides part of determining the relevancy of any image object
for a dynamic proxy execution environment and mobile resident on the cache.
aware servers to decide which set of tasks have to be
assigned to each proxy. Related research has also been Our work focuses on combining the cache replacement
carried out in Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) [3] policy of the content proxy with an adaptation-aware cache
that use presents topology aware overlays for efficient indexing scheme in order to arrive at a more holistic method
distributed multimedia application support. Self-adaptive of cache management for content adaptation proxies.
CDNs [4] exhibit ability to adapt their behavior in order to
cope with serving heterogeneous multimedia content under
unpredictable network conditions. In addition to it, 2.1. Content Adaptation Architecture
distributed content adaptation framework (DCAF) [5] has
been proposed for pervasive computing. A similar proposal The architecture which we have referred to is one proposed
on Automatic Adaptation of Streaming Multimedia Content by Jean-Marc Pierson [5] (see Fig.1). The architecture takes
[6] makes use of a server side adaptation engine. The engine into consideration client profile, network conditions, content
reacts to context changes and also facilitates multimedia profile (meta-data) and available adaptation services (third
adaptation in a distributed fashion along the delivery path. party software elements) to arrive at an optimal dynamic
adaptation decision.
The cache forms the backbone of the content proxy, and
hence an architecture that makes possible its efficient and
effective utilization is required to exploit maximum benefits.
Improved cache management ensures that the images that
are accessed frequently by clients are stored in the cache.
This decreases the number of adaptation operations involved
in transcoding, thereby increasing average response time.
This also increases the cache hit ratio (i.e., the probability
that an requested object is found in the cache). In addition,
the number of times the server is requested for an image is
reduced reducing costly IO time and easing the load on the
network.

An important component in the design of any caching

mechanism is the cache replacement policy. One of the
existing cache replacement policies for transcoding proxies
utilizes Aggregate Effect [7] for determining the image to be
removed from cache. The transcoding graph is constructed
based on parameters such as size of the object version, Figure 1. Content Adaptation Architecture
reference rate to each version and the delay in fetching the
image version. However, it does not take the cache size 2.2Local Proxies:
restrictions and the optimal number of versions that should
be kept on the cache and only provides a relationship They intercept user request and server responses and initiate
determination for the existing image versions. the transfer of adapted content

Another caching scheme called as PTC [8] describes the
working of proxies that transcode and cache for
heterogeneous devices requirements. A similar graph-based
data structure has been used that utilizes the earlier
proposed Aggregate Effect along with network parameters
and learning capabilities. This scheme again does not take
the cache restrictions and indexing scheme into account.
In addition to the replacement policy, another important
factor in the design of caching is the indexing structure to be
used. More recent research work in cache indexing has been
focused on making the tree structure more cache conscious
i.e. perform faster lookup with minimum required memory
space. A number of such tree-based indexing schemes like
CSB-tree [9], CST-tree [10], CSR-tree [11] have been
2.3. Content Proxies:
They accept user requests forwarded by the local proxies and
retrieve the images from either the local cache or remote
content servers. Adaptation is performed in the adaptation
engine if the appropriate image version is not present and
then transferred back to the local proxies ot be delivered to
the client.
2.4. ASPs:
Adaptation Service Proxies are the web services that can be
deployed on the content proxies to execute required
adaptation operations.
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 91
2.5. Profiles:
The architecture provides for – i. Device profiles for storing
device capability and compatibility information. ii. Client
profiles for storing user preferences and settings. iii.
Adaptation Service Registry for storing service profiles and
location.
As explained before, the presence of cache at any point in
this architecture increases productivity of the system.
Though caches make sense both at local and content
proxies, maximum performance gain can be attained when
the cache is used at the independent content proxies that are
deployed, as it provides all the aforementioned gains. A
second driving force behind this decision is that local
proxies are frequently absent in the current scenario of
mobile computing.
In the next section, we introduce our content proxy
architecture that incorporates an adaptation-aware cache
management system.
Figure 2. Content Proxy Architecture
3.1. Query Processor:
The communication forms the interface between the client
and the content proxy, and is depicted outside the proxy’s
boundaries to indicate that it is strictly not a proxy
component.
Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2009
3. Content Proxy Architecture
A content proxy that is supplied with a cache can be divided
into distinct modules based on which functionalities they
serve. The various functionalities of the content proxy
includes: deserialisation of the incoming client request,
management of the cache and its indexing, adaptation of
images to fulfill the requests and IO with the server for
retrieving required images.
In line with these functional requirements, our
architecture has been divided into four distinct modules, the
layout of which is given in the architecture diagram (see
figure 2).
Instead it could be merged with the query processor as a
single module, and this combination is referred to here as
the Query processor.
The function of the query processor is deserialisation of
incoming client requests in order to extract the user
parameters for requested objects. For example in an image
server this might include the pictures identity, resolution,
format and other such characteristics. Additionally this can
include device specific data such as supported data types
92 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
and processing constraints. Optionally they can be got from
the device profile data structure.
3.2. Adaptation Engine:
This module is in charge of carrying out all the required the
adaptation operations. Thus happens in case of a cache miss
or of a partial cache hit. In both cases, the proxy has to
carry out adaptation operations to satisfy client requests.
Adaptation operation functions that are existing can
again be used in our architecture, the general framework
presented here is independent of how adaptation is
implemented.
3.3. Cache Management module:
This includes both the indexing mechanism for the cache as
well as the implementation of the cache removal policy. The
indexing mechanism is required for fast and orderly access
of the cache. The replacement policy is decisive in the cache
architecture and determinant of the cache utilization and
efficiency.
3.4. Working of the Content Proxy
The Query Processor (QP) and Adaptation Engine (AE)
perform the decision making regarding the adaptation
operations that need to be performed on appropriate image
objects. On the other hand, the Cache Management module
(CM) maintains cache index and manages replacement
operations based on the input parameters obtained from the
previous two modules. The overall working of the proxy can
be described as follows –
i. Communication Interface gets the client
request containing identifiers for client, image
and the device type.
ii. QP deserializes the query and forwards the
parameters to Adaptation Engine.
iii. AE fetches the device profile based on device
type specified in the query and decides on the
adaptation operations.
iv. AE determines the expected optimal
adaptation image parameters and sends it to
QP.
v. QP forwards it to CM.
vi. CM checks if the image version with the
required parameters is present in the cache.
a. If image is present, it is fetched and sent
to QP and then to the client via the
Communication Interface.
b. If not present, the CM tries to fetch a
“similar transcodable” image from the
cache which is then adapted to the
appropriate format in AE and then sent to
the client.
c. Otherwise, CM sends cache miss message
to QP. QP then instructs AE to fetch the
image from remote server for adaptation.
Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2009
vii. If cache miss had occurred during recent
image request, the image retrieved from server
is added to the cache.
viii. Cache overflow is avoided by removing the
least preferable image using replacement
policy.
4. Adaptation Aware Caching Scheme
Cache efficiency is characterized by –
• Amount of “less important” cached images
• Size of allotted memory
• Time required for the transmission of data from
the remote server to the content proxy
As the indexing scheme being proposed in this paper
focuses on being adaptation-aware, the study of third factor
above is beyond the scope of this paper. For content
adaptation proxies, similar images should be indexed closer.
Moreover, index should have caching policy information in
order to achieve faster image replacement in case of a cache
miss. And as per convention, the removal policy in the
index should favor more frequently adapted objects which
can lead to a reduction in computational overheads.
Consequently, the response time can be bettered.
A cache management algorithm can be analogized to the
classic Knapsack problem [12]. Consider D as the dataset
(more specifically image-set in our case).
D = {D1, D2, …, DN}
xi = {0,1} where xi = 0, if Di is cached
xi = 1, if Di is not cached
wi and si are said to be the “relevancy value” and size of
Di respectively.
The aim of the caching mechanism is to –
N
a. Maximize (Cache volume) V = Σ i = 1 xi wi
b. Ensure Σ i = 1 N xi si <= S, where S is the total cache size
It is clear from the above expressions that the “relevancy
value” w plays a pivotal role in the overall design and
implementation of the cache. Keeping in mind the
application of caching on content adaptation proxies, we
define the relevancy value of j the version of image Di as –
wi,j = F (si,j, di,j, fi,j, ti,j, ni )
where,
si,j is the size of image version
ri,j is the image version resolution
di,j is distance of image version from “nearest similar”
image
fi,j is frequency of access of image version
ti,j is last access time of image version
ni is the number of cached image versions of Di
From the above notations, it is obvious that a crucial
parameter in determining relevancy value wi,j in content
proxy cache is the distance of image version from “nearest
similar” image. We define a nearest similar image as
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 93
another version of the same image that has higher
resolution and from which the target image can be obtained
through local adaptation. Arriving at a suitable value for
this parameter can result in a reduction in the number of
repeated requests to the remote server for the same image
version. Some of the other terms that are used in the paper
to describe the caching mechanism are defined below:
Cache Hit: When an exact match for the clients request is
found in the cache, it is termed a cache hit. This depends in
the availability of frequently accesses cache images in the
cache, a direct consequence of the replacement policy.
Cache Miss: The requested image is not found in the cache;
hence it should be accessed from the server. This involves
IO time, hence an increased response time.
Partial cache hit: The requested image is not found, but an
image which could be an acceptable replacement, or one
from which the object could be got by adaptation is present.
Here the server need not be accessed and in the absence of
IO time the access time is considerably lower. Hence the
presence of partial cache hits increases performance. This is
unique to our architecture and the adaptation scenario.
Threshold: This is used to define when a partial cache hit
occurs, i.e. the limits of acceptability of cache images and
when cache images can be used for adaptation. This is not
fixed by us as this threshold could depend on the processing
capability of the deployment system, the promised QoS and
other such factors that depend on individual instances.
Hence we leave this as a variable parameter.
5. CACHE ACCESS SCENARIOS
5.1. Cache Hit
Figure 3. Cache Hit
• The request from the client arrives at the Query
processor
• The Query processor deserializes the request and
passes parameters to the indexing component of
cache management
• The indexing component of the cache management
system searches for the pertaining image
• Image Found, the result is transferred to the query
processor that is transferred to the communication
interface from where it reaches the client
Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2009
5.2. Partial Cache Hit
Figure 4. Partial Cache Hit
• The request from the client arrives at the Query
processor
• The Query processor deserializes the request and
passes parameters to the indexing component of
cache management
• The indexing component of the cache management
system searches for the pertaining image
• Image not found, but another version from which it
could be transcoded from is available in the cache.
The existence of such an image is decided using a
threshold value.
• The candidate image is sent to the adaptation
engine along with the deserialised parameters
• The image is adapted and transferred to the
communication module to be sent to the client
5.3. Cache Miss
Figure 5. Cache Miss
• The request from the client arrives at the Query
processor
• The Query processor deserializes the request and
passes parameters to the indexing component of
cache management
• The indexing component of the cache management
system searches for the pertaining image
• No image that falls within the threshold limits is
found in the cache
• The server is requested for the corresponding
image
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Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2009

a) If server responds with an exact match It is
transferred to the client via the communication
module
b) In case the responded image is not an exact
match, the received image id forwarded to the
adaptation engine for transformation
according to client requests then sent to the
communication interface.
• In the latter case (b) the cache must again be
updated with the new adapted image. This is
decided using further parameters based on whether
an image or its variation is more frequently
accessed.
6. Conclusion & Future Work
The proposed architecture for content proxies in adaptation
networks incorporates adaptation-aware cache management
features. These features lead to an improvement in the
performance of content proxies by reducing the number of
requests to remote content server and reducing
computations for adaptation operation by caching the most
frequently adapted image versions. Our future work focuses
on the development an efficient indexing data structure that
in addition incorporates removal policy. Intertwining of
these two makes the cache efficient as there is lesser
overhead. The data structure is also made adaptation aware,
in contrast to existing indexing and replacement policy
making it an apt fit for content proxies.
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aggregate effect with weighted transcoding graphs for
efficient cache replacement in transcoding proxies”,
Proceedings. 18th International Conference, 2002.
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“PTC: proxies that transcode and cache in
heterogeneous web client environments”, proceedings
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[9] J. Rao and K.A. Ross, "Making B+-tree cache conscious
in main memory", In SIGMOD, pages 475-486, 2000.
[10] Ig-hoon Lee, Junho Shim, Sang-goo Leeand Jonghoon
Chun, "CST-Trees: Cache Sensitive T-Trees",
Advances in Databases: Concepts, Systems and
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[11] Dong, 1 Yu, "CSR+-tree: Cache-conscious Indexing
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